Love script inside a heart outline

The rain has been coming sideways over the fish market since Tuesday, and I have spent most of it under the awning of Hoyle's stall lettering price cards that the damp keeps curling. Mr Hoyle says the cheap card bleeds like a bad conscience, so I have gone back to the heavy stock Arthur used to keep in the tin with the cracked lid.

Arthur taught me the continuous line before he taught me anything else. You do not lift the nib, he said, not for the loop, not for the tail, not even if you have made a mistake halfway through a word. You carry on and make the mistake part of the word. I thought it was a trick to save ink. It was really a lesson in nerve.

Yesterday I did a heart for the cake stall at the top end, the one with the little brass bell. I drew the outline in one sweep, round the top, down to a point, back up again, and then ran the word love through the lower half as if the letters had been poured in. Arthur would have said the tails were too long. I left them long anyway. The customers stopped to look at it instead of the cakes, which is either a compliment or a warning.

Arthur's own card is still in the tin, the one he wrote the week before his chest gave out. It just says Open, in a single line that never breaks, and the O closes exactly where the pen started. I haven't the nerve to write the last stroke on mine yet. Come up at Easter and tell me whether the rain has finally stopped, and whether I am allowed to use the good ink.

Your loving sister, Nell